THE REFORMATION AND LATER FOUNDATIONS The Reformation represents the great boundary line in the history of European universities. Even in Catholic countries its effects found expression in connection with the Counter-Reforma tion. The influence of The humanists, and the special character which the Reformation assumed in Germany in connection with the labours of scholars like Erasmus, John Reuchlin and Melanch thon, augured well for the future. German university teaching was free from the frivolity, pedantry, and scepticism which characterized so much of the corresponding culture in Italy. It gave promise of resulting at once in a critical and enlightened study of the masterpieces of classical antiquity, and in a reverent and yet rational interpretation of the Scriptures and the Fathers. The bigoted and ceaseless controversies evoked by the promulga tion of Lutheran or Calvinistic doctrine dispelled, however, this prospect, and converted the universities into gloomy fortresses of sectarianism. For a century after the Reformation the history of Lutheran theology became almost identified with that of the German universities.
first Protestant university was that of Mar burg, founded by Philip the Magnanimous, landgrave of Hesse, May 30, 1527, and was mainly built up out of the confiscation of the property of the religious orders in the Hessian capital. It rapidly became famous, and attracted students from remote countries. After 1605, when, by the decree of Count Maurice, its formulary of faith was changed from Lutheran to Calvinistic, its numbers greatly declined. This dictation of the temporal power now becomes one of the most notable features in academic history in Protestant Germany.
The Lutheran University of Konigsberg was founded Aug. 17, 1544, by Albert III., margrave of Brandenburg, and the first duke of Prussia, and his wife Dorothea, a Danish princess. King Sigismund of Poland gave the charter (Sept. 29, 1560, and students who graduated as masters in the faculty of philosophy ranked as nobles of the Polish kingdom. When Prussia was raised to the rank of a kingdom (1701) the university was made a royal foundation, and the "collegium Fridericianum," which was then erected, received corresponding privileges. KO
nigsbPrg will always be remembered as the university of Kant. In 1862 the university buildings were rebuilt, and the number of the students soon after rose to nearly a thousand.
The Lutheran University of Jena was opened on Feb. 2, 1558. Distinguished for its vehement assertion of Lutheran doctrine, its hostility to the teaching of Wittenberg was hardly less pronounced than that with which both centres regarded Ro man Catholicism. For a long time it was chiefly noted as a school of medicine, and in the 17th and 18th centuries was in bad repute for the lawlessness of its students, among whom duelling pre vailed to a scandalous extent.
The Lutheran University of Helmstedt, founded by Duke Julius (of the house of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel) re ceived its charter, May 8, 1575, from the emperor Maximilian II. It was munificently endowed by the founder and by his son; and its "Convictorium," or college for poor students, expended in the course of 3o years no less than ioo,000 thalers, an extraordinary expenditure for an institution of such a character in those days. Distinguished by its comparatively temperate maintenance of the Lutheran tenets, it attracted a considerable concourse of students, especially from the upper classes. Until suppressed in 1809, Helm stedt enjoyed the special and powerful patronage of the dukes of Saxony.
The "Gymnasium Aegidianum" of Nuremberg, founded in 1526, and removed in 1575 to Altdorf, represents the origin of the University of Altdorf. Altdorf was about the poorest university in Germany, and long one of the most eminent. Its whole endowment never rose above i800 a year.
The conversion of Marburg into a school of Cal vinistic doctrine gave occasion to the foundation of the Universi ties of Giessen and of Rinteln. Giessen, founded by the mar grave of Hesse-Darmstadt, Louis V., as a kind of refuge for the Lutheran professors from Marburg, received its charter from the emperor Rudolph II. (May 19, 1607). In 1625 the university was transferred to Marburg; in 1650 it was moved back again to Giessen.